Clearing Away Pieces Of The Past Sometimes Can Mean A Great Loss

February 23, 1986|By Richard N. Campen

Our apartment is at the southwest corner of Summit Place, Mount Dora, the comparatively new condominium on property previously associated with ''The Castle.''

I knew of ''The Castle'' through reading Richard Edgerton's book, Memories of Mount Dora, and I have talked briefly with Sue Smathers, who had lived there for a half dozen years or so. I regret that it was necessary to demolish it as well as the restaurant that had occupied the property at Fifth Avenue and Alexander Street where Constitution Square was to have been.

I dislike seeing any of the old fabric of this village lost. There is little enough of it.

In scanning the lakeshore with our birding scope shortly after returning to our apartment this past autumn, we became aware of considerable activity in the highest branches of a fairly large dead tree about a thousand feet almost due west of us.

First we saw hawks with speckled, off-white breasts which, because they neither had red shoulders nor red tails, we took to be broad-winged hawks. They would roost on the highest branches for interminably long periods in a high state of alert. From time to time, at first almost daily, we observed an American eagle high up in this tree, identifiable by his totally white head and golden, hooked beak.

I commented to my wife that even a dead tree serves a purpose in this interdependent world in which we live. From it the hawk and the eagle were able to spot their prey.

More recently there has been a great deal of osprey activity in ''our'' tree. As often as not, when we turned our scope on the higher reaches of the tree, there would be an osprey tearing a fish apart with his vicious beak as he held it in his powerful talons. On such occasions the surrounding branches would be populated by black sea crows waiting for a morsel -- lacking the aggressive ability of the osprey to catch a fish on their own.

On some occasions we have observed three ospreys at one time dining on their catch in the tree. What a sight! It became habitual for us to look in the scope to see what was going on in ''our'' tree.

This noon I looked out and the tree was gone. Had it been blown over in a wind associated with a weekend storm? Hardly, as a dead, foliage-free tree offers very little wind resistance. What could have happened to ''our'' tree? Shortly before dinner I biked over Old Highway 441 to about where I believed the tree had been located. I crossed the railroad tracks and looked down 15 or 20 feet to the marshy land in which the tree was rooted. I followed the trunk of a fairly large, fallen tree to its base and, lo and behold, saw a fresh chain-saw cut at least a foot in diameter.

Why had it been necessary to destroy this tree so useful to hawks, eagles and ospreys? It seemed too far removed from the highway to be a threat to motorists. I saw an osprey with a fish in his talons, in the aerodynamic way that ospreys carry fish, circling above the place where the tree had been. I felt that he, too, wondered whatever happened to his wonderful perch -- a great loss to both of us.

I am saddened by the loss of this great tree which, even in death, served a useful purpose, as I am also saddened to contemplate the loss of ''The Castle'' and the restaurant at Alexander Street and Fifth Avenue, Mount Dora.